AVID GUIDE for AMA Workflow GFCAM
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AVID GUIDE for AMA Workflow GFCAM Media Composer 6.5 Symphony 6.5 NewsCutter 10.5 Avid Editing Systems IKEGAMI GFCAM Features in Media Composer 6.5, Symphony 6.5, NewsCutter 10.5 and later. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to acknowledge the advice, feedback and support of the following people who have given freely of their time and advice. I am responsible for the accuracy of the content, and any errors or omissions are mine alone. Angus Mackay Robert Russo Avid, Montreal, Canada Avid, Burlington, US Nobuhisa Miyazaki IKEGAMI ELECTRONICS,USA CORRECTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS Feedback, advice and corrections are always appreciated. [email protected] Be sure to visit WWW.AVID.COM/AMA Version 5 COPYRIGHT 2013 all rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form 2 | Page A M A IKEGAMI GFCAM G U I D E Contents INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 4 IKEGAMI GFCAM PLUGIN SUPPORT ............................................................................................ 5 GFCAM FORMATS ....................................................................................................................... 6 WHATS ON YOUR GFPAK ............................................................................................................ 9 SCREENING AND ORGANIZATION ............................................................................................. 11 SCREENING GFCAM ................................................................................................................... 12 PREPARING FOR THE EDIT ......................................................................................................... 14 CONNECTING TO A GFPAK ........................................................................................................ 16 OUTPUT GFCAM ....................................................................................................................... 19 AVID MEDIA ACCESS WORKFLOWS ........................................................................................... 20 3 | Page A M A IKEGAMI GFCAM G U I D E INTRODUCTION AMA (Avid Media Access) is the Avid architecture for linking to file based media rather than ingesting it. This document is specifically about linking to Ikegami GFCAM files in your Avid Editing Environment. This is the second Workflow guide you should consult. AMA is described and its workflows and features explored in the AMA Master Guide. This current document assumes you have read that guide, which contains most of the detail about how to perform AMA operations. The Guide you are reading now covers the specifics of GFCAM within the AMA architecture. This is not a full GFCAM workflow guide, it explores the feature of Avid Media Access which itself is a part of many complete Ikegami GFCAM workflows. OTHER AMA RESOURCES You have many other resources for AMA information. Apart from the AMA Master Guide and this document, you may consult: IKEGAMI GFCAM PLUGIN GUIDE The PLUGIN, which you must install, has an accompanying guide with details for its use. Avid Editing Guide for your Editing System This came with your editing system, or can be downloaded from the Avid Knowledgebase, www.avid.com/support Avid Editing Application HELP This is, in effect, the Avid Application manual online at your editing computer. The HELP contains all the information in the official manual, and is easily accessible to answer your questions. WHO AM I? I am Paul Sampson, a freelance trainer, an Avid Certified Instructor (ACI) and an Avid Certified Support Rep (ACSR) living in Canada. I have experience with many clients, different environments and a variety of hardware. Every week I am at a different facility assisting with training and workflow within the Avid environment. 4 | Page A M A IKEGAMI GFCAM G U I D E IKEGAMI GFCAM PLUGIN SUPPORT HISTORY Avid and Ikegami have a long history together. In 1995 they pioneered the idea of tapeless recording. The first product was called the CamCutter and it recorded in the camera on portable hard drives. This evolved into another product called the EditCam. The GF Series of products you see today have been available since 2008, and continue Ikegami's growth in this area. CamCutter cartridge and docking station, 1990's GF stands for "Giga Flash”, and refers to the fact that the recordings are being done on flash RAM. GFCAM is supported on your editing system through the installation of an external plugin supplied by Ikegami. The Ikegami GFCAM AMA software is available from the link to the Ikegami site at at www.avid.com/AMA. You may link to GFCAM material using Link To AMA Volume but not using Link To AMA File(s)…, as we shall describe shortly. You may Consolidate and Transcode GFCAM material, but you may not Import it. AMA Link to Volume… AMA Link to File(s)… Import Consolidate Transcode 5 | Page A M A IKEGAMI GFCAM G U I D E GFCAM FORMATS GFCAM recordings can be one of 5 formats, as shown below. The AMA Plugin for GFCAM will support all these formats from Ikegami: CODEC CODEC DETAILS RECORD TIME (approx) SD MPEG 30 30 Mb 3 minute / Gig SD MPEG 40 40 Mb 2.3 minute / Gig SD MPEG 50 50 Mb 1.9 min / Gig HD MPEG 50 50 Mb LongGOP 1.9 min / Gig HD MPEG 100 100 Mb I Frame .9 minutes / Gig The SD MPEG codecs are comparable to the equivalent Sony Codecs. The HD MPEG 50 codec is equivalent to the Sony XDCAM 50 Mb HD 422 codec. While editing with GFCAM in these formats you can render and transcode into these equivalent Sony codecs to maintain the same codec throughout production. The HD MPEG 100 Codec is specific to Ikegami in the Avid realm. The GFCAM 100 Mb HD codec is not available as a transcoding, rendering or mixdown target. 6 | Page A M A IKEGAMI GFCAM G U I D E GFCAM Products The GF Series includes a Camera, a Media Station deck, a smaller Media Station portable deck, and a portable player. This line of products is being produced in cooperation with Toshiba. One of the things which Toshiba brings is experience with flash RAM. Recordings on this line of products are done on custom chips embedded in a carrier called a GFPAK. The GF Series of decks come with both a USB and a Gigabit Ethernet connector built-in. The USB connector is not for connection to your Avid. Unlike the devices of some other manufacturers where their decks can be mounted as external hard drives, the GF line is not designed to do this. Instead, the intention is that you would use the GFPAK’s directly via a USB connection, or download the material from the various decks using Gigabit Ethernet, and then work with these copies of the media. For many people in a server environment a Gigabit Ethernet connection does provide an accessible method of getting media from a GFPAK into the server. For standalone editing systems, most users will connect the GFPAK's directly to their Avid editing systems. GFSTATION GF STATION PORTABLE GFPLAYER GFS-V10 GFS-P10 GFS-V10PL For example, the GFSTATION deck is designed for use in a studio environment. It contains 128 GB of internal RAM on which it can record. For an Avid editing system to access the content recorded on its internal RAM, the material will be moved off the deck via Gigabit Ethernet or by copying it to a GFPAK. It is this copy of the media which Media Composer would access. 7 | Page A M A IKEGAMI GFCAM G U I D E GFPAK GFPAK's are currently available in 16, 32, 64 GB and 128 GB. Record capacity of course depends on the format chosen, a 64 GB Pak will record 2 hours of 50 Mb High Definition footage. When using the GFPAK on its own with your Avid, no special docking station is required. The GFPAK has a USB connector and will mount as a drive. There is GF Series GFPAK also a Serial ATA connector on the GFPAK for connecting to other Ikegami devices. If you require faster transfer speeds, an eSATA Dock is available for computers with a free SATA connector. This 5 ½ inch dock uses the Serial ATA connector on the GFPAK. The GFPAK can then be docked directly to a PC. 8 | Page A M A IKEGAMI GFCAM G U I D E WHATS ON YOUR GFPAK You will be linking to the GFPAK using FILE > LINK TO AMA VOLUME. You will not be using Link To AMA File(s)… This means you will not normally be navigating the GFPAK file structure. Remember when you copy the contents of a GFPAK to another storage medium (making a virtual volume) you must copy all the files and folders on the GFPAK into a folder which you should name uniquely for your own easy identification. This is the folder you would link to. Notice that on a GFPAK the AUDIO and the VIDEO are in separate folders. This is why Link to AMA File will not work- the recordings are stored seperately. There is a PROXY folder. GFCAM proxy support can be purchased as an option. In that case, proxies as QuickTime .mov files will be found here. The proxy video file contains UMID, Timecode and more in MOV file. Avid dos not currently support a QuickTime proxy workflow with GFCAM. Your clips will appear in your bin after linking with a default naming form of MyBin001 MyClip0038. You may set metadata at the camera to apply a new, more specific default clip name, or of course rename clips in the editing application. Renaming clips will not affect the ability of the editor to link to them. 9 | Page A M A IKEGAMI GFCAM G U I D E You might also be interested in the folder CLIPINF. This folder contains XML files, one for each clip. If you open one of these files in a web browser or a text editor it contains information about the recording, the camera which made it, the camera settings used and if entered even the names of the crew on the shoot! When you receive content from places unknown, this is a fast way to determine the format of the recording you have been given. Format compatibility Avid editing products provide an end to end solution supporting GFCAM media.